You know, it’s not just the daily rage from hearing and seeing our dear leader making more north korean pronouncements; it’s also the petty flareup from a dick head parking in a handicapped spot and then trying to clap back at my side eye. It’s also a professed friend who never engages even while wanting engagement . . . on my side only, apparently. That pisses me off to no end, right there. Then there’s the existential rage of helplessness at situations beyond my control and my ensuing neurotic rage at my lack of self control. At this point, it becomes necessary to pop another blood pressure pill and practice some dilettantish form of meditation, but I keep coming back to it, like a tongue exploring a sore tooth. I just can’t help it sometimes. Fireball to the rescue. I take comfort in the fact that I can feel strong emotions, knowing that they will pass, as they always do. Tomorrow, I will wake up in my usual sunny mood unless I dream again of trying to cook a burger on a grill that is dirty and cold and I can’t figure out how to turn it on. That turned my nap into a restless and angry unconsciousness. That just won’t do at all. So, another day will come and another opportunity to create will come along, and that will soothe my rage again.

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Laziness is passive. It’s like wearing concrete shoes in an overheated room. Nothing wants to move, even if you tried.

Rumination is active. It’s inward attention. You don’t notice the concrete shoes or the beckoning warmth. You are focused on what’s percolating inside, whether it’s a cool recipe, an idea for a poem, a mental sketch of what your next art piece might resemble.

Laziness will spend a ton of energy looking for something interesting on TV to avoid rumination. It will also check Facebook 952 times to see what that person you don’t even want to look at is up to in order to avoid the thoughts of WHY you don’t even want to look at that person’s likes.

Rumination forgets to check Facebook for an hour at a time, or just glances to see if anyone has become a patron yet. Rumination is germination, really. Thoughts become real and active.

Laziness and rumination are two sides of the same coin. Chances are, one will turn into the other eventually. Laziness is exhausting. So is active thinking. The flow between the two can be smooth or bumpy, but the flow will come. It will translate into action when it’s time, and not one minute before.

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I’m always baffled by so-called Christians being among the most hateful people in the world. I don’t pretend to accept them or their short-sighted behaviors and in fact, will actively work to stay as disengaged as possible. After years of seeing this behavior and hearing the rhetoric, I’ve tended to view professed Christians with a jaundiced eye.

Today, I saw love in action. True love guided by the tenets of faith and translated into real works. Two people took the time to take care of us with groceries, with kind words, with some monetary gifts, with their faith in action. That they are angels is beyond doubt; that they are fully human with human foibles is also beyond doubt. I think that those of us who look at people of faith with misgivings tend to paint humans with a broad brush and fail to notice that all of us are subject to the perceptions that may not be as based in reality as we might wish them to be.

For someone to accept me for who I am, flaws and all means that I also need to accept them. It doesn’t mean that I need to understand their motivations or their innermost thoughts or even how they go about their day-day-day lives. It means that by whatever measure I look for in myself I should be about the business of using that same measure for others, regardless of belief or nonbelief. Those angels may lose their wings in an hour; that’s not my problem. That those angels showed up with their wings in full glory at a time when I was feeling desperate means the world to me, and for that, I can acknowledge their divinity and humanity in all the glory that is shown to me.